Nothing to Say Again ... Yet Again

I can’t think of anything to write about this week.

Well, actually, I thought of several things to write about, but all of them seemed like they’d be more work than fun, and, if I spend several hours writing something that I don’t enjoy writing, you’re not going to enjoy reading it either.  Trust me on that one.  Maybe next week I can get my thoughts more organized and actually complete one of the several ideas I have in my “topics” file.

So, this is the third time I’ve written a post like this, and I seem to have started a tradition of using these posts as a retrospective on the blog itself.  And far be it from me to dismiss tradition, even one that I invented myself, mostly accidentally.

So, my handy dandy blogger.com control panel tells me I have 219 posts.  Checking how many of them are “interstitial” (that is, posts which mostly say that I’m not going to do a full post), I see 79, although some of those are more substantial than others (such as the very first “nothing to say” post), and of course 34 of them are posts over on my Other Blog.  Counting the Perl posts but discounting the remainder of the interstitials, that would leave us with 174 posts, which average around 1,500 words each.  At least, 1,500 is what I generally shoot for.  Why, you ask?  Well, I suppose it’s because I wrote my very first post, then went back and counted how many words it was, and it was 1,536, and I said to myself: that sounds about right.  Of course sometimes I fall short, and the post is only around 1,200, or even, very rarely, between 800 and 900.  But, then again, sometimes I manage to crank out 2,000-word monsters, so it probably all balances out.  If we figure 1,500 words as an average, that would be 261,000 words, which is pretty overwhelming.  If I just do a raw count of words in all the files in my blog folder (which not only includes several half-finished posts that haven’t been published yet, but also counts words in quotes and links and other things which I typically exclude in my personal word count, and would also count the interstitials), I get 250,001, plus the chapters of my novel (in a whole separate folder) adds another 56,687 words, for a total of 306,688.  (Also, it might be that there are some posts which aren’t in the directory: the very first post wasn’t in there, as it happens, although I downloaded it so I could count it just now.  But there might be others missing as well.)

Either way, somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter million words doesn’t seem an unreasonable guess.  That’s a lot of words for you not to read.  I do continue to remind you not to read this blog, as if the title weren’t sufficient.  Occasionally I post links to this blog, especially on my other blog, when I don’t want to repeat myself and I’ve already expounded on a topic plenty.  Inevitably, this leads to someone’s smartass comment: “I went to the link you provided, but it said not to read it, so I didn’t.”  Oh ho ho.  Perhaps it actually does bear saying explicitly: I don’t particularly need you to remind me of the name of this blog.  I’m the one who named it.  If you’re confused about the name, please go back and read the first post, or even go back and peruse the first ”nothing to say” post, which contains some interesting meanderings about the nature of paradox and its application to a blog which I continue to write weekly at the same time I exhort the public not to read it.  Go on and read (or reread) those; I’ll wait.

Done?  Good.  Let’s move on then.

The name is really more of a warning that you have to make a conscious choice to read a post here, despite warnings to the contrary.  Perhaps a more realistic name would have been ”Warning: Management assumes no responsibility for any time wasted while perusing the content herein.  By continuing to read, you assume all responsibility for any crappy opinions you may encounter, any statements that may cause you to be enraged and/or disgusted, and/or any words that might be considered ‘bad’ by more sensitive readers.  The reader proceeds at his or her own risk.”  But, you know ... “Do Not Read This Blog!” just seemed shorter.

So I keep on writing and telling you not to read, and that’s unlikely to change.  After a quarter million words, why stop now?  I seem to have a winning formula going.  Plus, I’m starting to enjoy it.  At least a little.  Theoretically, you do too ... else why keep reading?  I doubt anyone is assigning you my blog posts as homework, so you’ve exercised your freedom of choice to read this far.  Said freedom of choice may realistically be better exercised elsewhere, if you ask me, but you’re a big boy or girl and don’t need my permission nor my advice.  In fact, you’re sort of ignoring my opinion to read all about my opinions on various topics.  And, at the end of the day, that’s the real reason this blog is named “do not read.”  Because, that way, if you ignore me and read it anyway, you’re forced to confront the fact that you can’t possibly listen to anything I have to say without simulataneously ignoring something I have to say.  It’s a great reminder that you should take crap you read on other people’s blogs with large quantities of sodium chloride.  And it makes you confront the paradoxes inherent in life by making you live one.  And you know how I feel about paradox.

So keep reading, if you must.  I’ll keep writing.  Except when I don’t.  It’s a crazy ol’ world we live in, but it’s the only one we’ve got.  May as well make the most of it.